oa Ontwikkelingen in de linkerperiferie van de nominale constituent

This article argues that the Modern Dutch noun phrase (NP/DP) has acquired a new slot in its left periphery. This slot contains interpersonal modifiers, like focus particles, modal adverbs and other epistemic modifiers. On the basis of historical corpus inquiry it is shown how this slot has developed and how it has been accommodating more and more complex elements in the course of time. This diachronic evolution has consequences for the synchronic description of the noun phrase. Any synchronic structural description of the noun phrase, at whatever stage in the history of the language, has temporary status only.